Don't Be Scared
by Sunshinecackle
Summary: Michael knew he had to say and do something. Firkle hung on every word. (Very slight shipping)


**Title:** Don't Be Scared  
**Author:** Donnie  
**Fandom:** South Park  
**Setting:** Michael's House  
**Pairing:** Vague Michael/Firkle  
**Characters:** Michael, Firkle Smith, Michael's Stepmom, Firkle's Parents  
**Genre:** Friendship/Hurt/Comfort/Spiritual  
**Rating:** T  
**Chapters:** 1/1  
**Word Count:** 1240  
**Type of Work:** One-Shot  
**Status:** Complete  
**Warnings:** Canon Ages, Child Abuse, Mentions of Alcohol Abuse, Obsessive Behavior  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything.  
**Summary:** Michael knew he had to say and do something. Firkle hung on every word.

**AN:** Alright, hey, guys! I'm excited to get back to writing for South Park, I've taken too long of a hiatus. Get ready for more goth kids stuff, I guess. xD I hope you guys are ready for this! This is vaguely based off of a song, called Don't Be Scared by Andrew Bird. Here we go!

**EDIT:** This is mega old. Sorry. I have sixteen fics to post and seventeen that need edited. If you're someone that can edit for all kinds of fandoms, please message me. I really need some help.

**Fandoms needed for betaing what I have so far:** Saw, Insidious, Insidious/Saw Crossover, Fallout 3, Heathers, Heathers/Dismissed Crossover, South Park/TheVVitch Crossover, Assassin's Creed, Kick-Ass, Left 4 Dead 2, Dragon Age and Until Dawn.

**Don't Be Scared******

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Head hung low, Firkle stood in front of the door that seemed to tower over him like a looming nightmare. Usually, he hung out with all _three_ of his friends, but Henrietta had been drug off for "family time" and Pete was firmly burrowed beneath eight blankets at home with a good book. That left him running to Michael's house alone.

Even Michael's crazy step-mom didn't deter him as much as actually staying alone with his idol did. She hadn't questioned the bruise on his cheek, had barely noticed the child slinking into her house without knocking. But Michael would be _alone_ with him, and might as well have been omnipotent in the eyes of the child suddenly terrified of him. It stilled his small hands on the door frame, slowed the extension of his body to reach the knob, but when he finally turned it, the fear in him drained.

Michael lay on his bed, the room dark save for the clumps of pillar candles arranged randomly about it, hands on the electric guitar that he insisted he'd learn to play someday. It rest in his lap, and he tapped along to the Concrete Blonde song currently creeping from his speakers, and the whole scene brought out an odd side of the kindergartener before him. With the light dancing on his already sharp features, the fifth grader was transported from this realm and straight to the stars, to the time in history when there was none other to speak of.

Suddenly so confused as to why he'd been confused, the boy took a few steps in, reverent of entering his graven image's sacred space. With a cigarette perched between his lips, the elder male shifted dark chocolate eyes to him and snorted a little through his nose.

"Hurry up and close the door." His stepmom would kill him if she had to hear the opening to Jonestown again today, and the door was a better buffer than Firkle's small body. While Michael didn't see it as an order, so much as an expectation, Firkle nearly leapt to do just as he was asked, before shyly skirting around the bed. He didn't often sit on the same plane as Michael, if only because of his own twisted need to keep him on a pedestal. There was no need to sully a God's presence with that of a sunken mortal.

The silence stretched between them, filled only with the beat to the song adjusting for the chorus and Michael's occasionally louder thumps against the guitar. Between the two of them, three cigarettes ended up crumpled in the ashtray beside one of the elder goth's already long legs, and those ever observant eyes found the younger boy's face. Suddenly, everything seemed sharp and too bright, too quick to focus on everything at once. Firkle found himself pinned down beneath Michael, the elder goth's hands holding his jaw and head respectively, and his oceanic blue eyes never left the elder's. There was a dark look in them, the kind of primal anger that came with upsetting someone that should have been able to call down death on anyone that required it.

"Who did that?" He asked, voice bordering on a shaky almost-whisper. When Firkle's gaze faltered and his purple stained lips parted, closed and parted again, he shook the smaller's head a little. "_Who_, Firkle?" Much as he was a new part of the group, the youngest member and definitely the craziest, it didn't stop Michael from feeling an odd protectiveness over him. If someone was giving him shit and going so far as to leave him bruised and silent, well, that person was going to get a cane up the ass.

"My… Mom." Firkle finally squeaked, his voice unnaturally high and perhaps slightly more cracked than he had expected. The look the two boys shared in that moment conveyed so many things at once that Firkle was dizzy with the revelation that his God must have accepted him as part of the flock.

"Why." It wasn't a question, and Michael could tell he probably sounded harsh. How many times had his own stepmother reached out and popped him one because he wasn't what she wanted? It wasn't a secret that Firkle was no more a pariah than when he was at home with his family. Even Michael found it to be tense, and he wasn't the best at gauging social situations he wasn't in total control of.

"I don't know." That seemed to be what broke him, however, and a tear slipped down his cheek. It burned when it hit the taller male's hand and he nearly recoiled with a hiss as he shook his head. No, tears were for pussies, and Firkle was the most hardcore kid he'd ever met in his life. Tears wouldn't work here, he had to do something.

"Sh, sh, hey. No. We don't do that." Tears showed weakness, and if there was anything that Michael knew well, it was that weakness wasn't tolerated in any society. Pulling back and tugging the smaller form along with him, he held him against his chest. "What's got _you_ so scared? I didn't think you knew how to cry."

"I… Don't want to die." When Firkle finally said it, finally articulated all of the thoughts that went through his head because his parents couldn't be trusted with him, well, Michael knew better than to be an ass. If nothing else, Firkle's loyalty meant that Michael wouldn't be at the wrong end of a knife, but the kid had already started to grow on him.

"Don't be scared of something like that." Michael's voice was quiet, calm, suddenly, like the first few notes of a song before the drums crashed in, "Don't. You don't have to worry about something stupid like _death_." Maybe putting these thoughts into the head of an impressionable five year old was dangerous, but what else could he do? The kid needed something, anything to hold onto, and if he clung to Michael's button-up any tighter he just might rip it in half, "Death is a beginning, not an end."

Sometimes, the tallest goth could be more eloquent and profound than anything Firkle had ever heard. The smaller goth's body melted from a tense line to the simple clinging of an insect to its current mode of travel. He closed his eyes slowly and meditated on the words, it seemed, focusing on Michael's breathing and syncing his own with it. The elder goth hummed softly, a rumble in his chest that seemed to calm the savage beast still using him for a seat, and he pet his hands through the other's hair.

"Death is a beginning, right, Michael?" Firkle finally asked, after what felt like eons of silence, even after the Concrete Blonde CD had finally spun its last track.

"Right." Absently kissing Firkle's head, Michael sighed. "Your parents won't miss you tonight, right?"

Considering his mother had been neck deep in a bottle of wine and his father had been half out of his mind with whatever he'd been yelling at upstairs, Firkle was safe in thinking he'd be better off here.

"Right, yeah."

"You're staying." And when someone like Michael told you something in that tone of voice, even if you could have ripped out his throat with your teeth in a second, you listened.

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**AN:** Man, it's been a while since I wrote for my boys. And I don't know that I have written for them all that much as actual kids, so this was… Refreshing. I hope you guys enjoyed!


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